After announcing its plans for the app just three months ago, Facebook-parent Meta formally released Threads on Wednesday.
As of Thursday morning, 30 million people had downloaded Threads, according to the business, including a significant number of corporations, celebrities, journalists, and other well-known accounts.
Intent on Threads Early adopters rushed to try out the app and publish their first posts on Wednesday night, making it seem a little like the first day of class. Some questioned whether the app may end up becoming the “Twitter killer.” As of Thursday morning, Threads was both the most popular trending subject on Twitter and the top free app in the Apple App Store.
Threads may be a major danger to Twitter, which has come under fire ever since Elon Musk assumed control of the service in October 2022 and has operated it in a seat-of-your-pants manner. But Twitter has just exposed itself, upsetting users over a temporary cap on the amount of content they may access each day. Additionally, Threads might help Meta grow its empire of well-known apps and give it a new ad-supported platform.
What is Threads?
The parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp has a new app called Threads. The network resembles Twitter in that it features a stream of mostly text updates, while users may also upload photographs and videos and engage in real-time chats.
A 500-character limit will apply to messages posted to Threads, according to Meta. Users can respond to, repost, and quote other people’s posts on Threads, just as on Twitter. The software also allows users to share posts from Threads directly to Instagram Stories and integrates Instagram’s existing UI and functionality.
Meta’s New Threads App
Since the official launch of Twitter rival Threads by Meta, there are already 10 million members.
Additionally, thread accounts may be labeled as private or public. Threads automatically verifies verified Instagram accounts.
“The vision for Threads is to create an option and friendly public space for conversation,” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a Threads post following the launch. “We hope to take what Instagram does best and create a new experience around text, ideas, and discussing what’s on your mind.”
In the early hours of Threads’ release, some users did encounter a few bugs and problems loading material, but this is to be anticipated when millions of users are simultaneously logging in and utilizing the program.
How Do You Sign Up?
Users can alter their bio to make it specific to Threads after signing up through their Instagram accounts, keeping their login, password, and account name the same. The list of accounts that users follow can also be imported directly from Instagram, making it incredibly simple for users to start using the program.
But leaving Threads is not nearly as simple. However, the firm states in its privacy policy that “your Threads profile can only be deleted by deleting your Instagram account.” Users can temporarily deactivate their accounts via the app’s settings section. The amount of information that the Threads, like Instagram, can gather about users, including location, contacts, search history, browser history, contact information, and other data, has also generated concerns from some users.
Where is Threads Available?
According to the firm, Threads is accessible on Apple’s iOS and Android platforms in more than 30 languages and 100 countries.
‘Twitter Killer’: Could Threads Be The Case?
In an effort to dethrone Twitter as the preferred tool for in-the-moment, public talks, Threads is just the most recent platform to be introduced in recent months. However, it might have the best chance of succeeding.
Many Twitter users have stated a desire for an alternative since Musk acquired control of the social media network late last year. Because of the service’s numerous technical issues and policy changes, some well-known Twitter users have stopped using it.
Scale and infrastructure already in place at Meta could work in its favor. Threads makes it astonishingly simple for users to get started, in contrast to many of the other Twitter competitors launched in recent months that forced users to join waitlists or acquire invitations in order to sign up and then required them to struggle to recreate their network on the new site.
The issue for new social media platforms, according to Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri, is frequently not getting users to sign up, but rather retaining them after they do.
